How to Succeed Even When You Feel Like Giving Up

NOTE: Whether you are a blogger or entrepreneur or just an average person, the tips in this blog post will help you.

Today, we are going to talk about several things you can do when you feel like giving up:

– how to cope with overwhelm – how to outsource tasks (and which ones to outsource) – how to stay on track (stay motivated)

“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.” ~Zig Ziglar

OUR MANY RESPONSIBILITIES CAUSE OVERWHELM

As business owners, we have many responsibilities.

These include:

Marketing our products or services (finding customers)

Dealing with customers (and customer complaints)

Keeping accurate records (bookkeeping)

Managing our websites and social media accounts

Ordering supplies

Finding time to do “all the extras”

All of these responsibilities can cause us to become overwhelmed.

Today, we are going to talk about how we can cope with such feelings, learn which tasks can we can outsource to others (and where to find such people to help us), and what to do to help us stay on track and continue to be motivated to not only run our businesses, but grow them.

HOW TO COPE WITH OVERWHELM – 10 WAYS

1: Breathe.

You can also practice meditation, which involves doing deep breathing exercises and centering yourself.

2: Do some yoga or engage in other exercises.

Exercise is a great way to clear your mind. Plus, it’s good for you!

You can do some yoga, go for a walk or a run, dance, or do anything else that gets your body moving!

3: Take a break.

This is probably the most obvious option!

Find something that takes your mind off work. Watch TV. Go out for coffee with a friend. Go shopping. Take an art class. Knit or crochet.

The key is to find something you enjoy doing, which will make you feel relaxed and refreshed!

4: Stop scheduling appointments.

Keep a visual calendar in sight so you can see how busy your week is going to be.

Do not schedule more than one thing a day!

5: Start saying NO to others.

Say YES to only the important things! Prioritize!

6: Be realistic about your time.

We are all given 1440 minutes to spend each day. What you do with them will determine how you feel.

To make the most of your time, you can use a timer to help you stay focused on your task. Decide how much time you want to spend on a specific task, then track how long it actually takes you to complete it.

Once you have a clear understanding how long (or how little) a task actually takes, you can be more realistic with your time, and plan to use your time wisely.

For example, how long does it take to check your Facebook notifications and respond to everyone? Do some days take you longer than others, depending on what you’ve posted?

Once you know your “feedback schedule,” you can allot specific times to reply to everyone.

7: Work during your daily productivity peak.

What time of the day are you most productive? Work during that time!

8: Stay organized.

Keep “on top” of things, and don’t let things pile up or get out of control.

9: Celebrate!

Focus on your achievements, celebrate your victories, and take time to appreciate how far you have come during your journey.

Often, we only think about all of the things on our TO DO lists; we don’t stop and consider how many things we have checked off!

Try keeping a DONE list to help you remember all of the things you have done!

10 : Get in the right mindset at the beginning of each day.

Do you wake up feeling groggy? Do you have a hard time climbing out of bed, or functioning until you have had 3 cups of coffee? Do you struggle with motivating yourself because you simply have so much to do that you don’t know where to start? (Raise your hands!)

What is our mindset?

Our mindset is how we view things. It involves our attitudes, and a particular way of thinking. Simply put, it is our state of mind.

Our mindset is made up of our thoughts and beliefs.

Each of us has a set of different thoughts that regularly occupy our minds. These thoughts are determined by our experiences, our education, where we live, and how we were raised.

I use positive affirmations to help me “right my mind.”

What are positive affirmations?

Affirmations are positive statements that are repeated on a daily basis that alter your current (usually negative) beliefs by sinking into your subconscious.

Even though these statements might not initially be true, the constant repetition of them eventually makes them a reality!

This is a strange phenomenon, but it is also a theory that has been proven to work. In a way, it is kind of magical!

So… I read my personalized list of my positive affirmations DAILY, at the beginning of the day, so I can change the way I think (and be more successful).

Some examples:

I deserve happiness and success.

I am motivated.

I am in control of my life and my destiny.

I am becoming the best version of myself that I can be, and no one can stop me.

I am unstoppable!

I love myself and my life.

I am blessed and grateful for all I have.

Doors of opportunity are constantly opened for me.

I expect great things from myself, and I will achieve my goals.

I feel strong, excited, passionate, and powerful!

Today I am concentrating on meeting my goals.

Today I am concentrating on moving my life forward.

I am a strong, capable, independent woman who can achieve ANYTHING I set my mind to!

Consider the task/profit benefit of your time. For example, if you can earn $65 an hour editing, and it takes you 1 hour to schedule your social media posts for the week (and costs $20), what would you rather spend that hour doing?

Hire someone to do the tasks you hate!

“Never give up on something you really want. It’s difficult to wait, but it’s more difficult to regret.” ~Unknown

You can hire a coach or consultant (such as myself) who can help you develop a plan of action and then help keep you accountable to that plan by speaking to them on a regular basis.

“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always become a better version of yourself.” ~Madonna

Surround yourself with positive, successful people

Plan for the worst

Change your environment — in two ways – 1: Work in another location, and 2: Decorate it with inspirational pieces

Remember WHY you started (Why you want to achieve your goal? Why is this goal important to you? List at least three ways this goal will improve you and help you be a better person, whether you succeed or fail. And what you stand to lose if you don’t give 100% or if you quit your goal?)

Want it even more

Realize that success involves sacrifices and takes time to achieve!

Channel your passion and choose goals based on your values, not on what others expect from you.

Attribute your failures to the right causes (Ex. Social media growth goal of getting 10,000 Twitter followers each month – if you fail to do this, it is probably because you had a poor social media strategy and didn’t spend your 10 minutes on Twitter each day, not because you’re simply lazy or worthless à Consider Thomas Edison and how many experiments were done before the light bulb was invented. He failed 1000 times before achieving success! à Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded)

Lorraine Reguly, B.A./B.Ed., is an author and English teacher-turned-freelancer for hire. Her life journey is motivational and inspirational. Lorraine's book, From Nope to Hope, is a self-help book designed to help anyone who wishes to lead a happier life, and contains a built-in workbook. Lorraine offers 4 different services on Wording Well, including writing/blogging, and editing. She also helps others become published authors! Check out her services and see what she can do for YOU. You can also visit her author site, Laying It Out There. And don't forget to pick up your FREE copy of 20 Blog Post Must-Haves today!

I am also thinking of outsourcing someday, but the problem is money. I don’t have the money to hire someone. I guess, I just need to keep on pushing myself till I become successful.Paolo Ubiadas recently posted…French Fries are bad for diabetics

Paolo, one day, after putting in a lot of hours and hard work, you will have enough money to outsource some tasks. Then, you will appreciate your free time even more because you will value it more. You will remember what it took to get there. Don’t give up, my friend. I didn’t.

Outsourcing is key Lorraine. My developer just upgraded my blog from plain old basic hosting to a VPS. The extra money paid made a world of difference; lightning fast load times but more than that, if I tried to transfer files and trouble shoot blogging problems solo I’d have been doomed. Pay people to handle stuff you cannot handle, to focus on what you love doing, leading to max blogging growth.Ryan Biddulph recently posted…How Electrified Skeeter Rackets Teach You a Blog Monetizing Lesson

Here’s the thing: I always tell people that success is a choice, there’s no way you’ll succeed at anything in life except you truly make up your mind that you must succeed. It’s not something someone can do for you, you’re the only person that holds the keys to your success.

You, therefore, have to do everything possible to ensure you attain success. Eliminate all forms of excuses, and do what you must do.

How have you been doing? Giving is something I’d love to do every single day. There isn’t a day in the last several years when I toyed with the idea of “giving up”

Give up on the blog. Give up on the stupid idea of trying to do two other blogs. Give up trying to explain to newbie clients as to why they should be doing blogging, SEO, content marketing, Social Media, paid ads, landing pages, and marketing automation. Give up on the daily grind. Give up the commute (even though I sit at a co-working space, and I essentially work for myself) Give up trying to nurture clients from hell.

Hi Lorraine, I want to first tell you how much I love those affirmations you have included here. I love to do that kind of stuff. As for staying on point and getting all my work done, I became overwhelmed about 2 years ago and fought my way out of that situation. It wasn’t easy, but I did use so many methods to do so. I never want to go back to that again. My mindset now is taking things in stride. Yes, I have a schedule written down with long term and short term goals. I leave a little room for life getting in the way because it always seems to do that lol. I’m calm and my mindset is pretty cool these days. I also learned not to be such a control freak and delegate some work from dog walking, to using fiverr for images. I even hired someone to look over my sales pages and make the necessary changes I could never do. So yea…things are pretty cool on my end. -DonnaDonna Merrill recently posted…What are the Best Time-Saving Social Media Tools?

Donna, it’s great to hear that you have found some solutions to your problems! Blogging can be time-consuming, I know. Outsourcing sure helps! I’ve taken a backseat to blogging many times over the years. It is hard to do it all when you’re a one-woman show! It’s been about 3 months since I published anything new on my site, but I have over 50 drafts for new posts saved, in various stages of completion. So… I will be good to go for a while, once they are all finished!

I am a perfectionist, too, so that sometimes hinders me. I am learning, like you, to let go. Thanks for sharing your experiences here, Donna. See you soon, on our blogs and on Facebook and Twitter. 😉

Spot on tips, Lorraine! I love the idea of outsourcing! Of course, because I’m a VA but really, it does take a huge workload off yourself. That allows time for you to do all the other great things like meditate, yoga, and hell BREATHE!

Very informative and in-depth article. In life, many times you feel like that, it’s not worth it and you should just give it up. But those moments are the true test of your dedication and your passion. If you are passionate about something you will eventually find what you looking for. But here the take away is never giving up and to never back down. If you keep grinding and keep on hustling you really get what you desire. I like how you categorized everything. I also read your article about writing tips on Techtrickworld. It was an impressive article. I have also started blogging after 3 years. That is the biggest regret I had that I stopped but hopefully this time I will not. Thank you for the much-needed motivation. keep up the good work.Ashish Kumar recently posted…Best Malware Removal Tools for Windows in 2018

Ashish, I’m honored you read my article on Atish’s blog. Thank you! Thanks, too, for visiting my site and leaving a comment. I LOVE hearing from people who read my stuff! 😉

Blogging is tough. Even for me. I seem to blog in spurts… This is not good (having a schedule is better) but we are not perfect beings. We do what we can. So, don’t give up! Good luck with your blog, too. 🙂 I am happy to provide a bit of motivation to you!

excellent piece of advice given. as it is the part of life to go through ups and downs but one needs to stay focused and stay strong with the resolve to never give up. it seems to be hard but going through the blog really makes one feel that not giving up is the actual success. I think that the relation of the making small goals every day also leads to success. thank you.

This is indeed an in-depth article on this subject and you’re done a great job to make a relief in my mind. I enjoyed reading it, Thanks for sharing this tips. I think i like your 10th tip because, that is the starting point of a day to make discussion for what to do on the day mind refreshing is a good feature in our life. so i agree your tips. Good work love it. Thanks

Thank you for sharing your tip on how to stay motivated. I would like to add one of the quotes that help me when I get into loop and that it could be helpful for other people to if they think about it’s meaning:

I have been blogging for ages now and there had been many times when trying to do too much, learn too much – has overwhelmed me to a point where it totally crashed my productivity. I think your suggestion about saying “NO” is the biggest point here. One not only needs to say no to others – one needs to also learn to say no to oneself.

There has been times when trying to do more – getting few last minute comments in, or getting the draft ready for tomorrow morning – or simply keep working and pushing the sleep time to an all-time-low can be avoided if you learn to say no to yourself.

I have been lately outsourcing a lot and that has given me plenty of time to focus on other – more important aspects of our business and at the same time keep sanity by working at optimum levels,

Shantanu, saying NO is so important! You are right too — we need to say NO to ourselves as well. I find myself saying NO to myself often, especially when I want to watch TV and there is work to be done! LOL I make myself do the work first and use TV as my reward. 🙂

I know I need to outsource more tasks, too. I’m glad you are doing this already, and are seeing results!

Happy New Year! I love this post – especially the positive affirmations you shared!

Last year was tough for me to stay motivated but I’m making it a personal goal to stay positive and motived in 2018. I’m actually coming back from a break and the time off did me some good. I’m refreshed and loving work again. 🙂

Cori, I’m glad to hear you’re back on track! I wish you the best… especially when you get demotivated. I know life can be hard to handle, sometimes. As bloggers, we have many responsibilities. We have even more when we build our businesses. Things always seem to pile up, and break us down.

I hope you are able to cope with these stresses much better this year! If you ever need help, or a shoulder to cry on, or even just someone to listen to you vent, let me know. Message me on Facebook. I’ll be there for you, girlfriend! 🙂

Great article you have here, filled with insightful information that will definitely benefit every one no matter your industry.

For me, when I feel overwhelmed, I like taking some time out to refresh. This allows me come back with amazing focus and the right set of mind.

More is that we all need to be organized to be able to get things done. This for example calls for have a sustainable marketing strategy – have a calendar in place. This will help you greatly in this area.

I agree with lorraine that blogging takes a long time before you will experience the benefits of blogging. To motivate you guys, always remember that blogging is the road to your financial freedom and if you want financial freedom then work hard on your blog and make it grow. There is no shortcut to blogging or cheat to make it faster. Make blogging your passion if you want to succeed in blogging.

Shafi, I get demotivated all the time. LOL That’s why this post was so relevant to me. Thanks for reading and commenting on it. I’m glad to hear you outsource tasks already! What else do you do when you feel like giving up?

One thing that I like to do, when this happens, is to take a break. And while I take a break I like to take some time to meditate and reflect on my goals. I want to take the time to use my imagination to imagine myself accomplish my goals.

This way I will get back to work with ambition and ready to keep on going. I believe taking breaks and using your imagination to step into your vision to re-energize your ambition, is very important!

Freddy, thanks for the compliment. 🙂 It’s great that you have learned to step aside and take a break when you need it. I like that you do some self-reflection, too. It’s important to always remember your WHY… WHY you started what you’re doing, WHY it’s important to you, etc.

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